My Name in the Big Bright Lights!

Er. Well.

I'm late posting to my blog this week. I have a good excuse! (Brag to follow, you can bail now)

I am a finalist in an honest to goodness writing contest!

I entered my Query and First 25 in the North Texas Romance Writers of America GREAT EXPECTATIONS contest with the hopes of getting some good feedback. Of course I was floored when I found out it made the final cut.

I had a week to revise both the pages and the query, and getting it all critted and fixed up. THANK YOU QUERY TRACKER FORUMS and my super awesome Beta Reader, Yannik!

Oh man, queries will be the death of me, really! (Someday, I may post the farce that was my first query!)

Anyway, my final entry is all polished and ready to go.

Whatever happens in the final judging, this contest is a really good one to get useful feedback. I got 2 pages of score sheets back from each judge (every entry was assigned 3 judges) and the comments really told me where both my strong and weak points are.

If you have a query-ready manuscript but are nervous of taking that first step in sending it out in the big bad world, enter a contest! It's fun and highly motivating!

A great, complete list of writing contests can be found at Stephie Smith's site.

Find Your Dream Crit Partner...Maybe?

If you're like me... A writer struggling somewhere between Rank Beginner (defined by me as a writer working on the first draft of their very first work) and published author (no matter how far along that road you are) you know how important it is to get fresh eyes to look at your writing. Let's face it, it ain't easy getting the story on paper to match that epic work of awesomeness that's in your head.

Here's where a crit partner can be your best friend... Or your worst enemy. Or a little bit of both. But regardless which side of that fence you sit on, you have to admit, critiques are NECESSARY.

But you need to find a partner you click with. Preferably someone who also writes (and reads) in your genre, and preferably someone who is a better writer than you are.

Throughout my rewrites of RESET, I've had various critters and Betas. But the one that showed me what a useful critique should look and feel like (to me) was a first page crit I won in a contest put on by the folks over at Bookshelf Muse (and they have several useful posts of crit groups on their blog too. Click here to read them).

Night and Day. So, I am on a mission to find a crit partner.

I'm thinking at this point that a sort of online dating service for finding partners would be useful. You know, like Critmatch.com or something. (Okay, that URL could go SO many ways, but you get the idea.)

And then, while browsing my favorite blogs, what do I find?

Over at the Between Fact and Fiction blog, YA author Nathalie Whipple is running a Crit Partner Classified. Go over and check it out. I've sent in my request via email (click on her picture to go to her blogger profile and find her email address). I didn't lie or try to make my manuscript sound tall dark and handsome when really, it's maybe only 5'9" and possibly slightly bald.

Who knows? Maybe I'll find my perfect match!

Playing with Stakes - not the Vampire kind!

Thee first draft of RESET was unreadable. A Great Big Mess.

I painstakingly put the whole thing through a wringer, then mercilessly chopped, pasted, rewrote. That was the FIRST BIG REWRITE.

I was so proud! My story worked!

Er, say again?

I prematurely queried ten agents - not top picks. Well, most weren't. Guess what? TEN form rejections. No surprise there. But that was okay - I was just getting my feet wet...Wasn't I?

After submitting my first five pages to the folks at the QueryTracker.net forums, I began to grasp what was wrong.

Back to the drawing board. I became the Ruthless Reviser yet again, cutting 15,000 words and tightening the story, making the plot clearer. I read the whole thing out loud to my dogs and was pleasantly surprised when I found I enjoyed it!

So, I'm ready to hit the query trenches again... Except, what the hell is my book really about? Sure there's romance, there's a twist, there's a couple of immortal beings.... But the stakes are not high enough. There's a lot of conflict, but no CONFLICT. There's not a whole lot to lose that the character hasn't already lost before.

It seemed I wrote my entire novel without asking any QUESTIONS!!!

Don't know what I'm talking about?

Holly Lisle writes about it HERE.

So the new question is: Can I raise my stakes, or should I stake my novel? Hmm, I'm not sure my MC can be killed that easily!

Happy Question Asking! When in doubt...Just ask "WHY?"

Does This Dress Make Me Look Fat? (Or, Will You Critique My Story?)

Writing.

Riding the roller coaster of emotions: the OMG, my story is awesome! and the Another rejection? My story sucks! does something to one's objectivity towards their own work.

So, employ the objectivity of someone else.

A Beta reader could be a friend or family member. But remember, they love you.

"Does this dress make me look fat?" Even if you seek an honest answer to the question, would they tell you? Remember, they won't want to hurt your feelings. Best find someone else, perhaps a member of one of the writer's forums you are a member of? Maybe someone with a cool screen name and avatar...

And since critiquing will only help you grow as a writer, how about swapping stories?

Okay, you've got the first 50 pages of your new crit partner's manuscript in your inbox. Eager to dive in and hopefully enjoy a good story whilst making suggestions for an awkward sentence here and there, you expect to be finished and have it sent back within the hour.

Uh oh. The dress really DOES make that person look fat. Do you say so? Or do you add a silk scarf, some bling, to draw the eye upwards?

What if the manuscript you are critiquing reads so much like a first draft from NaNo that you are on comment number 245 and it's only page 31?

"Sorry. The dress is really not right."

I opted to tell the writer where I, as a reader, was left feeling frustrated, confused and bored. I broke the critiquing golden rule of sandwiching a criticism in between two compliments (although I did comment positively in the parts I did enjoy), and although I tried to make my criticism constructive, I'm pretty sure I fell short. I do feel bad about that.

But should I feel guilty? Depends. If the writer was only looking for compliments on her dress, then I might. If she is truly looking to be published someday (aren't we all?) then I hope she'll accept my critique for what it is.

Honest.

I don't pretend to know all about writing, but everyone who reads knows when a story doesn't "work".

I wished I'd got back an honest "Yes, the dress does make you look fat" from my partner. I hope she wasn't just being nice when she said how much she enjoyed the story and wanted to keep reading. How will I know?


Crit Links:

How to Critique a Bad Manuscript

How to Take a Critiquing and Keep on Ticking



Where to find Beta Reader:


Forward Motion Writers Community Forums (free membership required)


QueryTracker.net Forums (Free membership required)